Maddow for Prez (and Stewart for Veep, of course)!
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This picture of wishful thinking is at the beginning of this post to make it known with no uncertainty how much I love and respect Rachel Maddow. I also would like it to be known that my adoration for her is NOT bandwagon-jumping: I have professed my loyalty to Dr. Maddow as early as December 2008 ever since I saw her appearance on Conan O’Brien (and for that there will always be a soft spot in my heart for Coco and his hair…)
To further set my girl crush all ablaze, Maddow gave a “fake” Presidential Address on her June 16 show following the much-anticipated, and laster much-criticized, Presidential Speech from The Oval Office by the Prez regarding the BP Oil Catastrophe. (Ok, seriously, peeps, we really need to stop using the term “Oil Spill”. Thanks.)
Maddow began her show thus:
You know how sometimes after you get into an argument or a confrontation with somebody, you can’t help afterwards thinking of all the things you wish you’d said. You run it over and over in your mind, imaging the perfect comeback or the perfect way to have made your point.
Did I ever?! Yes, YES and YES!!!! She had me at this “OMG that’s exactly how I feel all the time” moment…
But, that’s not all!
She proceeded to give her own Presidential Speech, a speech that she wishes the real President Obama has given instead. Here are some of the highlights in text. Or you can read the complete transcript which MSNBC put up right away due to unusually high demand. Or feel free to watch the video clip instead (after the jump) which is extremely gratifying, to say the least.
I‘m here to announce three major developments in the response to the BP oil disaster that continues right now to ravage the beloved gulf coast of the United States of America…
Never again will any company, anyone be allowed to drill in a location where they are incapable of dealing with the potential consequences of that drilling.
When the benefits of drilling accrue to a private company, but the risks of that drilling accrue to we, the American people, whose waters and shoreline are savaged when things go wrong, I, as fake president, stand on the side of the American people and say to the industry, “From this day forward, if you cannot handle the risk, you no longer will take chances with our fate to reap your rewards.”
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The second major development I‘m announcing tonight, my fellow Americans, concerns another oil industry assurance we can no longer believe. The industry has long assured us that they were capable of handling spilled oil…
The same low-tech ineffective equipment and techniques are being used to respond to this oil disaster today that were used in the 1960s and ‘70s to respond to spills back then.
That‘s because the industry has not invested in any new containment and cleanup technology in all of these decades, because they haven‘t cared too much about it as an issue and it shows. It shows both in the inept technology that we have to deploy, to contain, to clean up a spill like this.
And it also shows in the lackadaisical, uncoordinated, unprofessional way this inept technology has been deployed by BP. Beaches have been fouled. Wetlands have been destroyed. Wildlife has been killed that should have been saved. Pensacola Bay in Florida, if properly boomed, should never have been breached by oil. Perdido Pass of Orange Beach, Alabama should never have been breached by oil. Queen Bess Island, the pelican nesting ground and Barataria Bay in Louisiana – Barataria Bay itself – none of these areas should have been breached by oil even given the sad state of existing technology to stop it. But the fact that those areas were breached is BP‘s human error.
And tonight, as fake president, I‘m announcing a new federal command specifically for containment and cleanup of oil that has already entered the Gulf of Mexico with priority of protecting shoreline that can still be saved, shoreline that is vulnerable to all that has not yet been hit.
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And finally, the third development I have to announce to you tonight in the response to this oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is about how we got here and how that will change.
I no longer say that we must get off oil like every president before has said, too. I no longer say we must get off oil. We will get of oil and here is how. The United States Senate will pass an energy bill this year. The Senate version of the year will not expand offshore drilling.
Every president in the modern era has complained that America must get off oil. Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and now, I, fake President Obama – we have all intoned solemnly that we must get off oil.
Now that we have, at the hands of the oil industry, experienced the worst environmental disaster in American history, the time for talk is over. The world is different now. Our country is different now. The scales have fallen from our eyes.
People say we‘re not ready. They‘re right. We‘re not ready. We also weren‘t ready to fight in World War II before Pearl Harbor happened. But events forced that upon us and events have forced this fight upon us now…
If there are elements of a bill that cannot procedurally be passed by reconciliation, if those elements can be instituted by executive order, I will institute them by executive order.
The political cowardice that has kept politicians from doing right by this country, finally, on energy – finally, standing up to the oil industry – that cowardice has been drowned in oil on Queen Bess Island.
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Although I am not so naive as to believe that any president will ever be able to pass an Energy Bill and have it executed just so that will have any real impact on the environment in my lifetime, like I said, it is gratifying to imagine what it would have been like to hear these same statements from the real Commander in Chief (assuming he has not lost his mind and decided to wage a war directly against the 50% of the country that considers Fox News a reliable news source). Naturally, depressing at the same time to imagine what could have been…
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Here’s to you, Dr. Maddow. Thank you for the Perfect Comeback.
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She proves that a brilliant mind makes you instantly hot. Period.
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